BP presents new oil containment plan as Obama likens disaster to 9/11
From: NewsCore June 15, 2010 2:57amPRESIDENT Barack Obama touched down in Mississippi's Gulf coast region last night as part of a two-day, multi-state tour of the devastation from the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.Mr Obama assured Gulf residents and businesses the region's beaches will be restored to their "pristine condition", promising the full force of his government to require BP to quickly pay damage claims.
he also told the country that seafood from the region remained safe and implored holiday-makers not to cancel visits to the Gulf coast where many of the famous white beaches remain untouched.
But oil from the blownout BP well is spoiling significant parts of the shoreline and already has penetrated into critical marshlands, threatening breeding grounds for wildlife, waterfowl and sea creatures - in particular shrimp and oysters.
"I can't promise folks here in Theordore or across the Gulf that this oil will be cleaned up overnight," the president said. Yet he offered assurances that the "full resources of our government are being mobilized to confront this disaster."
Mr Obama had said yesterday the spill would shape how Americans think about the environment for years to come.
"In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come," Mr Obama told Politico.com.
His remarks will set the stage for a face-off the between the President and top BP executives at the White House.
The spill remains a crisis with severe environmental implications. Nearly two months after the disaster which killed 11 people, BP’s engineers are still unsure how much oil is gushing into the Gulf, let alone how much has already been released.
Shortly before he began his tour of the region, spokesman Bill Burton said with the President that the administration and BP were "working out the particulars" of Mr Obama's demand that the oil giant set up a multibillion-dollar, independently-run damage fund.
Mr Burton said the account would be in the hands of a third-party and would amount to "billions of dollars".
"We're confident that this is a critical way in which we're going to be able to help individuals and businesses in the Gulf area become whole again," he said.
On his fourth visit to the region, Mr Obama was determined to assert leadership in face of the calamity, with the White House showing the President using all the power available to him to stem the continuing flood of oil into the Gulf and extract compensation from BP for victims of the tragedy.
As the damaged well continues spilling millions of gallons (liters) of crude oil from its rupture about 1500 metres below the surface, Mr Obama has taken a hit in the polls.
Dealing with the catastrophe has also forced him to spend huge amounts of time on the crisis, cutting severely into his schedule, including cancelling a trip to Asia and Australia, and threatening his legislative agenda on issues like financial overhaul, climate change and immigration reform.
Mr Obama's first stop was a briefing at a Coast Guard station on Mississippi's coast, where he said that the two days in the region would help him prepare for Wednesday's (local time) showdown with BP. In particular, Mr Obama said there continues to be problems with claims for damages and with effective coordination.
"We're gathering up facts, stories, right now so that we have an absolutely clear understanding about how we can best present to BP the need to make sure that individuals and businesses are dealt with in a fair manner and a prompt manner," the President said.
Afterward he ate a lunch of local seafood, declaring it delicious.
BP's board gathered in London to discuss deferring its second-quarter dividend and putting the money into escrow until the company's liabilities from the spill are known.
The government had said earlier - uncertain that BP would voluntarily establish the damage fund - that Mr Obama was prepared to force BP to take the step.
The President 's two-day visit to Mississippi, Alabama and Florida precedes his first-ever Oval Office address to the US and his first face-to-face meetings with BP executives on Wednesday.
BP said in a statement its costs for responding to the spill had risen to $US1.6 billion, including new $US25 million grants to Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. It also includes the first $US60 million for a project to build barrier islands off the Louisiana coast. The estimate does not include future costs for scores of damage lawsuits already filed.
Mr Obama's first three trips to the Gulf took him to the hardest-hit state, Louisiana. On Monday, Day 56 since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killed 11 workers and unleashed a fury of oil into the Gulf, he started his tour in Gulfport, Mississippi. From the stop in Alabama, where oil was washing up in heavy amounts along the state's eastern shores, he moves on to Florida.
He will meet state and local officials eager for him to show command, provide manpower and supplies and also tell the public that despite the catastrophe that's crippling the fishing and tourist trades, many beaches are still open.
The government said early that BP had responded to a letter sent over the weekend asking the company to speed up its ability to capture the spewing oil.
In its response, BP said it would target containing more than 8 million litres of oil a day by the end of June, up from about 2.4 million litres of crude a day now. The government's high-range estimates say as much as 8 million litres a day could be billowing from BP's runaway well.
Although BP is now siphoning significant amounts from its blownout well 1500 metres below the ocean's surface, the leak will not be killed for good until relief wells are completed in August.
Increasingly accurate estimates of the spill have brought the enormity of the disaster into focus. Already potentially more than 100 million gallons (380 million liters) of crude expelled into the Gulf, far outstripping the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
http://www.news.com.au/world/b.....frfkyi-1225879692521BP executives could face 15 years' jail
From: NewsCore June 14, 2010 6:06pm
BP executives could face up to 15 years in jail for their role in the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, legal experts say.The advice from US legal experts came as executives from the world's other major oil companies separately claimed the accident "was preventable," reports said.
Jody Freeman, Professor of Environmental Law at Harvard Law School, told The (London) Times that if criminal negligence could be proved then "the law certainly provides for prison for environmental crimes".
She said that under normal circumstances, the maximum criminal penalty in such a case would be up to three years in prison, but in those where death and serious injury had occurred, as in the case of the Gulf oil spill, this could increase to 15 years.
The warning came as executives from Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips prepared to distance themselves from BP, according to planned statements seen by Financial Times sources.
The oil industry leaders were planning to testify in front of a subcommittee of the US House energy and commerce committee tomorrow that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico would have been "preventable" if BP had followed the industry's "best practices," the sources said.
The move was intended to make the case for continued new drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf.
Meanwhile, BP said yesterday that the cleanup and compensation effort cost had risen to about $1.6 billion, which included "the cost of the spill response, containment, relief well drilling, grants to the Gulf states, claims paid, and federal costs."
The revised figure came ahead of a meeting of BP's board in London, who were planning to consider demands to defer second-quarter dividend payments to fund the relief effort. US officials demanded Sunday that BP set up a special fund to pay oil spill claims and said President Barack Obama will give a rare White House address tomorrow, in a sign of the seriousness of the disaster both for the country and his presidency.
Obama was set to tour the affected states today on his fourth visit to the Gulf of Mexico since the disaster, the White House said.
"The president is going down to the Gulf on Monday and Tuesday to the states he hasn't visited - Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. When he returns he will address the nation from the White House," top aide David Axelrod said.
"We're at a kind of inflection point in this saga. He wants to lay out the steps we'll take from here to get through this crisis," Mr Axelrod, the President's senior adviser, told NBC television's Meet The Press program.
BP said its first "planned addition" to the containment system on the leaking well was set to be deployed "in the next few days".
http://www.news.com.au/busines.....frfkur-1225879591963We can live in hope that the exec's will end up in gaol/jail for 15 years or more. This has been the biggest stuff up since the Vietnam War
Logged
@ PB Spills Coffee....right on the mark with that skit 
